


Consequence

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Fuck Or Die, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-07
Updated: 2010-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 23:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There really was only one choice for Sanzo to make. Hakkai/Sanzo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consequence

**Title: Consequence**  
**Author:** [**jedishampoo**](http://jedishampoo.livejournal.com/)  
**Pairing:** Hakkai/Sanzo (baby’s first 83)  
**Rating:** NC-l7  
**Summary:** There really was only one choice for Sanzo to make. About 8700 words.  
**Author’s Notes:** I wanted to try my hand at a Saiyuki “they have to do it or die.” This was originally supposed to be a bit of 53 fun, but [**sharpeslass**](http://sharpeslass.livejournal.com/) convinced me to switch the players for a challenge, and I’ve always secretly wanted to write 83. So you all get angst instead of crack. Thanks to same [**sharpeslass**](http://sharpeslass.livejournal.com/) for the beta and the premise.

  
The woman clutched the serving-tray beneath her breasts like it was something precious. Her eyes held a desperate glint, and her fingers were so white-knuckled it looked as if she might snap the tray in two. The two small stone cups set upon it jiggled and drops of mud-brown liquid sloshed over their sides.

“Please! Share just one drink with me, sir. I beg you.”

Sanzo _tched._ He knew the damned woman just was not going to leave Hakkai alone. She’d been lurking around him the entire night. And Hakkai, the polite bastard, wouldn’t just tell her to _fuck off._

“Hey, Hakkai. Quit stealin’ all the cute girls, man.” That was Gojyo, leering at the woman like an idiot. Sanzo wondered why Gojyo didn’t just drop it, couldn’t see that the woman was psychotic, but realized in the same instant that Gojyo probably could. If there was one thing that Sanzo could say about Gojyo, it was that he understood women. He was probably trying, like Hakkai, to be nice to her.

It was annoying.

“Ha! I certainly don’t mean to,” Hakkai said with his smallest, politest smile. He directed the force of his politeness at the female. “I’m sorry, miss. We have to leave early tomorrow, and I want to have a clear head.”

The woman smiled a crazy smile back at Hakkai. “It’s got chocolate in it. Chocolate is... it’s very hard to come by around here.” The tray jiggled again.

Sanzo rubbed his eyes to forestall an impending headache. The crazy woman was going to snap the tray in two, and the brown-whatever that was in the cups was going to spill all over him, he just knew it, because he was sitting next to Hakkai. Sanzo considered whacking Gojyo with the harisen, but Gojyo wasn’t the real problem, for once. Hakkai was just too damned nice, sometimes.

“I wanted to share something precious with you,” the girl continued. She ducked her head so that her black hair fell over her eyes.

“Well, forget him, sweetheart. I’ll have some, then,” Gojyo said, and reached out a hand.

“Not before me, you pervert!” Goku yelled, spurred into competition by Gojyo and the thought of chocolate. He stuck out an arm.

“No!” the girl yelled. She twisted her body to jerk the tray away. The two idiots’ hands collided on one of the cups and sent it flying. Sanzo felt the inevitable warm splash as the brown-whatever drenched his face. It dripped down onto his robes.

“Shit!”

“Oops!”

“Look what you made me do, Monkey--”

“Hey! It’s not my fault--”

“I wanted you to have it!” the girl cried with wide eyes at Hakkai. She started to bawl and howl, mouth gaping wide and crooked, and Sanzo let go of the fan he’d been fingering inside his robes and reached instead for his gun, because someone was going to die--

And stupid, polite Hakkai laid one hand on Sanzo’s elbow in his most annoying “now, now,” gesture, and took the other small cup and downed it in a gulp.

“Mmmm. Very tasty,” he coughed.

“I’m going to kill--” Sanzo opened his mouth to say, and accidentally caught a taste of the stuff. Hakkai was lying: it tasted like shit. It was like chocolate rice wine-- a disgusting combination, adding sweetness to something that should be dry. “What the fuck _is_ that?” he said, instead.

But the girl had gone completely crazy. “No, no no!” she wailed and dropped the tray, and then covered her face with her hands and ran, threading past the other tables, out the door.

The innkeeper had seen the whole thing, and he ran over to their table and swiped at Sanzo with a towel. “Oh, sir, I’m very sorry. She’s usually harmless, but if she comes back I’ll ask her to go home--”

“She’d said she was the local healer,” Hakkai said. He coughed again. He’d gone a little pink in the face.

“Well. Sort of.” The fat innkeeper stopped swiping at Sanzo when Sanzo grabbed the towel. “She’s pretty good with herbs and stuff. Shaowei’s a weird girl. She keeps to herself, mostly, though she likes to come here some nights. And I don’t mind, because like I said, she’s harmless enough.”

“As long as she stays away from us,” Sanzo said and stood. The _sweet-brown_ taste was lingering unpleasantly in his mouth. He considered spitting but decided it would only add to his indignity. “I’m done. Upstairs. Let’s go. You have a laundry, right?”

“Certainly, sir, just drop it outside the door--”

“Awww! I haven’t had dessert yet!”

“Shut up,” Sanzo said, and Goku shut up. “You coming?”

Hakkai and Gojyo looked at each other in that way they had. Sanzo waited. After a few moments they both stood.

“I’m done,” Gojyo said, and stretched, glancing around. Sanzo assumed it was to see if any girls were watching.

“We’re coming,” Hakkai said. He looked at the innkeeper. “If she returns, you’ll be kind to her?”

“Of course! Of course. Like I said, she’s a little weird but she’s good with--”

Sanzo didn’t hear the rest because he’d stomped off, Goku in tow. The monkey was blessedly quiet as they made their way through the inn and up the stairs, but when they were in their room and the lights were out and they were stretched out on their parallel beds, he coughed to get Sanzo’s attention.

“Make it quick,” Sanzo said.

“Sanzo. What do you think was wrong with that lady?” Goku asked in a quiet voice.

“Don’t know and don’t care,” Sanzo said, hoping to quell further conversation. He was glad to be lying down. He didn’t think he’d drunk that much, earlier, but he was feeling a little buzzed. And, for some reason, he kept wondering about Hakkai, and whether or not he was in his bed, and how he was feeling. The wondering was annoying, as was the floaty feeling he got when he shifted on the bed. There was no reason that he, Sanzo, should be worrying about Hakkai, who could take perfectly good care of himself and who had Gojyo there in case he couldn’t, and--

Sanzo fell asleep.

***

Hakkai woke from an incredibly intense and erotic dream involving, of all people, Sanzo. They’d been together on the floor of the Temple of the Setting Sun. Naked. Touching. There had been the sound of heavy breathing-- it was still in his ears-- and the overwhelming scent of incense, and Hakkai still smelled it, wherever he was--

The breathing resolved itself into that of Gojyo, sleeping rather quietly, actually, in the bed a few feet away. It was dark, and the scent of incense faded as Hakkai crept further into wakefulness.

_Strange_. He was sweating, though it was cool in the room. And he had a very painful erection.

The smell that had eased with waking returned, of a sudden, like a wave. It slopped over him with a sickly-sweet warmth that made his stomach turn and his cock twitch at the same time. The images and sounds returned with it--Sanzo on the floor of the temple, his naked sweaty stomach pressed against Hakkai’s, moaning in a voice that Hakkai had never heard from Sanzo--

Hakkai may have moaned himself a little as he rolled over in the bed, hoping that shifting positions would quell the half-dream. That technique often worked when he had nightmares. Disturbing dreams were inevitable, but Hakkai had learned to deal with them. It helped; the smells and touches and images softened once more, and he was in the dark, cool inn-room, in his bed, the familiar sound of Gojyo’s breaths replacing the Sanzo dream-moans.

Hakkai thought it a strange dream for him to have had. It wasn’t truly a nightmare, but it was blasphemous, surely, in more ways than one. It wasn’t something that could be helped, however. Tomorrow he’d just be unable to look Sanzo in the eye for a few hours, and eventually, all would be back to normal. Hakkai wanted to laugh. Instead he took a deep breath and willed his nether regions to stop aching and throbbing so. It helped, a bit. Hakkai sighed with relief, a bit.

A few seconds later the wave of aching nauseous sensation was back, even more violently than before. This time it was a different scenario that Hakkai’s senses played out for him, but still Sanzo was there. _The smell of green and the soft gold of Sanzo’s hair under his fingertips--_ Hakkai rolled and ached and felt his stomach turn until it went away again.

He didn’t know how long the cycle went on-- days? An hour? A few minutes? It seemed endless. At one point Hakuryuu cooed in his ear, a soft _kyuuu_ of concern, but Hakkai brushed him off gently and suffered in as much silence as he could maintain. At a later point he noticed that the moon was shining into the room where it hadn’t before; it must have been an hour or two, at least, that this thing-- sickness?-- had assailed him, over and over. Again, it was a brief respite-- _Sanzo, Sanzo’s skin, Sanzo’s breath. _

During one of the _inn-room-Gojyo-I’m-fine_ moments, Hakkai rolled out of bed. He had to see Sanzo. He didn’t know why, but he knew Sanzo could make it go away. _Sanzo, Sanzo, Sanzo--._

“Kyuuuu!”

“I’m fine, Hakuryuu.” _Sanzo, Sanzo, Sanzo. _

“Hey Hakkai. You all right, man?”

“I’m fine, Gojyo.” _Sanzo, Sanzo, Sanzo. _

“’Right.”

He must have gone out the door of his and Gojyo’s room and into the room Sanzo was sharing with Goku _had he picked the lock? he didn’t remember_ because when he touched the bare skin of Sanzo’s shoulder as he lay on the bed, everything was better, the world hurt less and felt gold and wonderful--

** _CLICK-BLAM! BLAM! _ **

“What the _fuck_ are you doing, you bastard?” It was Sanzo’s voice, not hoarse and sensuous but loud and all-too-normal. And furious.

A hand on Hakkai’s chest shoved him away and he saw the steel barrel of Sanzo’s gun hovering close by, pointed at his forehead. Hakkai had a few brief, blessed moments of clarity. With some sense of self-preservation he willed his body and eyes not to waver, not to provoke another shot. How in the world was he to explain this?

Goku jumped out of bed-- not even he could sleep through that-- and stared at Hakkai with eyes that were yellow and enormous in the moonlight. “Hakkai? What’s wrong? Hakkai?”

“Sanzo. Help. I need you,” Hakkai whispered, and with faster reflexes than he’d imagined he possessed, grabbed the gun and tossed it aside. It thunked against the wall and he sort of fell forward, grabbing Sanzo’s bare shoulders, pressing his face against Sanzo’s, and saw Sanzo’s almost terrified expression before he was shoved away again, so hard that he fell backwards onto the hard, wooden floor.

“What the fuck...” Sanzo whispered into the silence before the sound of thundering footsteps filled the hallway.

***

Goku was blibbering. Sanzo stared at Hakkai on the floor. _If that was really Hakkai..._

Nothing in Sanzo’s experience had prepared him for the jolt of sensation that had passed through his body when Hakkai had touched him. Hakkai had moved in so closely, like he was going to kiss him. And for a moment, there, Sanzo would have let him.

“What the hell, Sanzo?” Gojyo, looking half-asleep, was leaning on the doorjamb, shaku-jou in hand. “Why’d you shoot? Why’s Hakkai on the floor? He looks bad. You look bad, man.”

The maybe-Hakkai moaned and curled onto his side, clutching his knees. Gojyo bent down to grab his shoulder.

“Did you shoot him, Sanzo?”

“No!” Goku yelled in Sanzo’s defense. “Hakkai was bein’ all weird...”

The innkeeper’s bulk filled the doorway recently vacated by Gojyo. Sanzo saw a young man craning his neck over the innkeep’s shoulder. He’d seen the young man around earlier, but his identity wasn’t important at the moment.

“What’s going on? Did someone fire a gun?” the large man asked.

“Shit,” Sanzo said, and went to retrieve his pistol from where it had fallen between the bed and the wall. He took the few moments to catch his scattered thoughts. Gojyo clearly thought the man on the floor was the real Hakkai. For some reason, it had _felt_ like the real Hakkai, to Sanzo, despite his strange behavior. He’d known Hakkai for a long time, in good and bad. _This was bad. _

“Did someone get shot? Do I need to call the constable?”

“No!” Sanzo said. When he found his gun he thumbed the safety on and tucked it into his jeans.

“Just a misunderstanding,” Gojyo said. Sanzo had fired enough bullets into enough inn walls that Gojyo knew the drill.

The hovering young man pushed past the innkeeper. “What’s wrong with that guy on the floor?”

“He’s... ill,” Sanzo said. “We’re fine. Go away.”

“We don’t have a doctor here,” the innkeeper said. “He’s two towns away. I can always call Shaowei--”

_Shaowei._ Amidst the confusion, a thought struck Sanzo like a bullet to his own brain: _that woman from earlier_. She was crazy. She’d had two cupfuls of something. One had been dumped on Sanzo. The other, Hakkai had drunk. Hakkai moaned on the floor again and rolled over onto his other side. Gojyo patted him and talked to him in a low voice.

“Herbs,” Sanzo said, looking at the innkeeper. “You said she dealt in herbs...”

“Oh, crap, Pop.” the young man said. “Shaowei. I. Uh. I think I know what happened.”

Sanzo glared directly at the young man for the first time. He was tall and good-looking in a country-boy kind of way. He resembled the innkeeper around the eyes. “What is it?”

“Um. She needs to help your friend, there. She did something like that to me. Uh. Once.” The young man’s round cheeks turned a bit pink, visible even in the dim light from the hallway. “Did you drink the sweet stuff? It makes you wanna... well, you sorta have to, uh. With her... sex and stuff...”

The innkeeper stared at the boy. “What? Liang, you idiot! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“What the fuck is going on?” Sanzo had redrawn his pistol and was holding it pointed upwards, with the promise that it could be pointed directly at them if they didn’t come across with information _right away. _

“Well, it was kind of embarrassing, Pop... and she promised not to do it again.” Liang’s voice lowered to a whisper. “To me, anyway...”

“What the--” Gojyo was watching the interplay now, one hand still holding Hakkai on the floor.

The man huffed. “Go get her, then.” At the boy’s frightened look, he huffed again. “Fine. I’ll go get her. Stay here and watch them.”

The innkeeper stomped down the hallway and Liang looked at Sanzo. His pink cheeks paled.

For Sanzo had pointed his gun at the boy. “I said, what the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t shoot me! Please. Talk to Shaowei when she gets here.”

In the meantime, Goku and Gojyo had picked up Hakkai and carried him over to Sanzo’s bed, but Sanzo was too focused on Liang to care. Much. Part of him wanted to shove everyone else out of the room and lie there with Hakkai. Touching Hakkai. Sanzo had never felt that before, and it made his insides churn with nervousness. He gritted his teeth and tucked the gun back into his pocket.

“Talk,” he said.

Liang held up a hand at Sanzo and sat on Goku’s bed. In a quick, nervous voice, he told them that Shaowei was “sorta lonely,” and that sometimes, she...did things with herbs or whatever “but I dunno, maybe it was something else ‘cause she said the first time she’d done it, it was an accident, and she’d been doing spells and stuff.”

“That’s fucked up,” Gojyo said from where he was sitting on the bed next to Hakkai. Sanzo fought the urge to move Gojyo and take his place. “There’s a cure, right?”

“Yeah,” Liang said, and looked down at his own hands, watching his fingers play with each other. “You have to. You know. With her.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad, Hakkai.” Gojyo’s laugh was dryer than usual. He looked at Sanzo. “But she’ll have a _normal_ cure, right? ‘Cause Hakkai says he can’t get at his qi.”

  
“She’d better have a normal cure,” Sanzo said, thinking not only of Hakkai.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Liang called over to Hakkai’s shivering form. “Do you keep thinking about her? And seeing stuff, and hearing and smelling stuff?”

“Yes. Something like that,” Hakkai whispered, with a light laugh that sounded like a death rattle.

Liang’s voice grew quiet again. “You feel like you’re going crazy and you’re gonna die. Shaowei told me I would die if I went long enough, but she could save me. It’s happened to other guys. We just don’t talk about it much. It does go away right after.”

“Fuck or die,” Gojyo whispered.

“What?” Goku asked from his seat next to Liang.

“She gave me the sweet stuff. And she had some,” Liang went on, not answering Goku. “Said that’s why it had to be her.”

Gojyo and Goku turned as one and stared at Sanzo. Gojyo coughed. “But she--”

“Shut the hell up. All of you,” Sanzo said, and started pacing. A few steps to one wall, bare feet slapping on the floor, a turn and then a few feet to the other wall. Hakkai twitched and moaned now and then. The rest of them watched Sanzo pace, then looked at each other, then back at Sanzo. They all looked at the door when heavy footsteps thumped down the hall.

The innkeeper was alone. He was pale and clammy-looking.

“Where’s the crazy bitch?” Sanzo asked, fingering the butt of his pistol.

“She’s dead.” The man swiped at his cheek with fat fingers. “She was hanging from a tree in her own yard. I knew her parents. She’d put the rope around her own neck and jumped, I think. The stool was right there...”

“Fuck,” Sanzo said. He glared at everyone and swallowed his own panic. _Hakkai was tough. He would get better, on his own, in a day or two. Or less, maybe_. “Pack up. We’re leaving.”

“You could wait for the doctor,” the innkeeper suggested. “Or we could send for some of the monks in the next town, they know stuff...”

“_I’m_ a fucking monk,” Sanzo said.

“The highest,” Hakkai croaked. He was rolled over facing the center of the room. His smile was grim like death.

“You could at least stay the night. For free,” the innkeeper said. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Sanzo ignored him. “You guys. Now! I said pack! Wait,” he told Gojyo as he stood. “Goku, grab Hakuryuu and Gojyo’s and Hakkai’s things. You, Liang, get my robes. Gojyo, you pack the stuff in here.”

Gojyo did it without complaint, as if he sensed that Sanzo didn’t want to be left alone with Hakkai. Which he didn’t. Sanzo gestured the rest of them out of the room. Liang grabbed his father’s elbow and nudged him out the door.

Sanzo looked at the bed and saw Hakkai looking back at him. His eyes were pained, his face shiny with sweat. Sanzo fought the urge to rush over there and lay his hand on Hakkai’s face, to touch him, feel the sweat between his fingers, to ease the pain. It was an urge he’d never had to fight before.

“Damn you,” Sanzo whispered. Hakkai closed his eyes, and Sanzo stomped out the door to wait for his robes.

  
***

The boy, Liang, had been perfectly right, Hakkai decided. He _did_ feel like he wanted to die.

He was curled up in the back of the Jeep as Gojyo drove them all. Hakkai slept now and then in fits and starts, but the bumpy roads didn’t help him any, and when he did sleep, there were the entirely inappropriate _Sanzo_ dreams.

He hurt all over, he wanted to vomit and couldn’t, and his erection ached with horrible constancy. At least Gojyo had covered Hakkai with a blanket and Goku kept him supplied with water to replace the liquids he’d had lost through sweat. Like he’d told Gojyo, he couldn’t even access his own qi to help himself. They’d all agreed that a doctor was out of the question, considering Hakkai’s youkai nature.

Several times Hakkai had considered asking Goku to thump him with the nyoi-bo, if only to knock him unconscious, to help him achieve some blessed relief. Better yet, maybe he could ask Sanzo to just shoot him and end this miserable sexual sickness for good.

Or beg Sanzo to touch him. On the few occasions over the past night and day that Sanzo had brushed near him, Hakkai had experienced his only true moments of blissful relief. Better, however, that he should beg for the bullet to the head, for how to ask such a thing of _Sanzo? _

_Sanzo, I want you. Please touch me. Let me love you. I must--_ Sanzo would be more likely to shoot him.

Sanzo was hardly unaffected. Hakkai could tell, even through his own suffering. Now and then Sanzo would look at him and Hakkai would catch a glint of something he’d never seen in Sanzo’s eyes before. Uncertainty? Longing? Whatever the case, the spell-poison-whatever was nasty stuff.

The smells of the countryside around them were all fresh and green, as green as the smell he’d begun to associate with his sexual Sanzo fever-dreams-- _was it only last night they’d started? _ Hakkai tried to keep his whimper quiet as he thought of Sanzo, his friend, his boss, of a sort; of touching his hair and smelling the green--

“Hakkai! You all right?” Gojyo called back. For a second the green was replaced by the smell of tobacco smoke blowing into the back seat. Sanzo and Gojyo had been chain-smoking even more than usual.

“No,” Hakkai said, truthfully.

“Shit,” Gojyo mumbled. “Goddamit, Sanzo. Hakkai says you might be able to help. Why the hell won’t you?”

“What do you expect me to do?” Sanzo growled. Goku moaned at the same time as Hakkai: those two had been arguing like this, on and off, all day. For them to argue was nothing new, but now they had Hakkai to worry about, Hakkai upping the tension level between them all. If they were attacked before Hakkai could be cured, how would they protect him and cover themselves at the same time?

It was a worry. Hakkai felt awful in more ways than one. If only Sanzo would touch him, lay healing hands on him... And Hakkai would touch in return, in ways he’d never considered touching another man, let alone Sanzo. To have those clear, violet eyes focused on him, to feel Sanzo’s heartbeat, hear Sanzo’s hoarse breathing as he begged for more--

“I dunno!” Gojyo was answering Sanzo’s earlier question. “Do some of your sutra mojo or something? Anything?”

“You want me to kill him, idiot?” Sanzo said. “Because that’s what this sutra does.”

_Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,_ Hakkai thought in a brief moment of freedom from the ache and the want.

Gojyo said it. “Well, how about _Kama_ Sutra?” Gojyo always made his most inappropriate sexual jokes when he was upset.

“What’s that? Is that one of the Tenchi-whatever scriptures?” Goku piped in from beside Hakkai’s head.

Hakkai could hear the distinct _click_ of Sanzo’s pistol, even over the breeze and the sound of Hakuryuu’s engines.

“Don’t! Shut the fuck up!” Sanzo’s voice was high and thin. Hakkai was humiliated all over again. He wondered, not for the first time, just how affected Sanzo was by all this. He’d only had a taste of the potion, or whatever it was. Still, Hakkai had felt his skin twitch beneath his fingers, only the night before...

Hakkai’s insides turned themselves in all the wrong directions. His skin was covered with acid: every inch burned and was tight and Sanzo’s hands were on him, and the tight was Sanzo’s body wrapped around him, Sanzo gripping his ass and pushing him in deeper, until they were locked together--

He was in no way getting better, as Sanzo had suggested he might. Only worse.

“Oh, _God_.” Hakkai couldn’t stop the cry that fought its way out of his dry throat. “Sanzo-- Please--”

“Shut the fuck _up_, Hakkai!” Sanzo yelled.

Was that the gun, pointed at him? Hakkai didn’t care, he welcomed it, anything of Sanzo’s, even his own death.

With a screaming, indignant _kyuuuu_, the Jeep screeched to a halt and Hakuryuu transformed. The four of them and their things were dumped into a heap in the dirt.

Goku looked stunned. Sanzo’s beautiful face was red and furious. Gojyo’s laugh was harsh-sounding.

“Guess we’re camping here,” Gojyo quipped.

Hakkai’s laugh as he lay curled on the ground must have sounded somewhat manic. “Good dragon, Hakuryuu,” he said, and laughed again until Goku splashed some water on his face.

“I wish. I wish I could help, Hakkai,” Goku said, his young face looking perfectly wretched. “I just don’t know how. Or why Sanzo won’t, if you say he can.”

“Too bad we can’t just call that Yaone chick. Bet she’d be able to do somethin’ for you, Hakkai. Probably better than somethin’. Better than this fucking cherry-assed monk--”

There was no gun-click and Hakkai briefly wondered why, until the twisting, smelling, aching took over again, worse than before-- every time was worse than before. Goku was patting him on the head, but the touch wasn’t enough, would never be enough.

“Goddamned dragon. Where’s my gun? When I find it I’m going to shoot you all--”

Hakkai heard Gojyo’s laugh. “I got it. I’ll trade you. If you do something for me, first.”

“Fuck you,” Sanzo said. _SanzoSanzoSanzoSanzo..._ “Goku, leave him alone and go get more water.”

Sanzo’s voice, tight and _God_, so beautiful. Hakkai couldn’t care anymore, could only do--

Before Hakkai realized he’d even stood he was tackling Sanzo to the dusty ground, felt the air whoosh out of Sanzo’s surprised lungs. That was okay, because Hakkai would fill them. He had Sanzo’s hands trapped in his and was kissing him like the crazy person he was and all was lovely. Sanzo whimpered beneath him and time stopped and the wrenching in Hakkai’s gut stopped and the sounds and smells and tastes were not the taunting dream-images, but were all real, and the entire world had calmed because he had Sanzo and nothing else mattered. There was only one ache left, the stiff, throbbing one pressed into Sanzo’s belly. Hakkai had to get their clothes off, had to have it all--

“Gethimoffme gethimoffme get him _off_ me, fucker. Bastard!” Sanzo had wrenched his face away and was _begging_ for help. Hands grabbed Hakkai’s shoulders and pulled him off and up.

“Hakkai. Man, we gotta--” Gojyo began. It didn’t seem that he could continue.

Gojyo. Hakkai slumped back onto his friend. The too-brief touch had helped; Hakkai found himself thinking clearly and rushed to speak while it lasted.

“I’m so sorry, Sanzo.” Hakkai hurt everywhere. He’d caused his friends pain; his was nothing-- he’d deserved it. “I’m so sorry. Go ahead and kill me. Give him the gun, Gojyo.”

Sanzo’s groan as he stood and brushed himself off sounded pained to Hakkai’s Sanzo-sensitized ears. There was silence for a few moments while everyone waited to hear what Sanzo would say.

“Tie him up or something,” Sanzo pronounced. Then he whispered, “Please.”

***

Sanzo sat in the dark and smoked in jerky, quick movements, trying to hide the way his fingers still shook. Across the campsite, somewhere, Hakkai moaned, unintelligibly, but still Sanzo’s frenzied brain told him that Hakkai was calling for him, was desperately crying his name. Every moan resonated in Sanzo’s bones so that he could hardly stand it.

Gojyo and Goku did their camp business but glared at him every now and then. Even when Sanzo wasn’t looking at them, he could feel their angry and confused eyes boring into his skin.

Sanzo didn’t care about them. But, contrary to what the idiots thought, he was worried about Hakkai.

Hakkai was a crazy fucker, no doubt about it. But he usually kept his shit together, more than any of them-- hell, more than Sanzo, even. For Hakkai to be acting like that--

The night was cool and green and mostly quiet, and Sanzo had time for introspection. He knew how he, himself felt-- he, who hated to be touched, who’d managed to always avoid-- To yearn for Hakkai’s touch until he feared the yearning-- Hakkai must have it a hundred times worse.

Even that brief... Sanzo had panicked. Not because he was truly afraid for his life: not from Hakkai, whom he trusted implicitly, under normal circumstances. But because it had thrilled him in a way that he’d never expected to be thrilled, and that he never wanted to feel again.

On cue, Hakkai moaned once more, and Sanzo’s body twitched all over, in every nerve, and asked him if he was quite sure about that.

Sanzo was so inwardly-focused that he almost jumped when Gojyo spoke from beside him.

“I might forgive you, Monk, for makin’ me tie up Hakkai,” Gojyo said, and blew smoke at Sanzo. “Maybe. If he hadn’t agreed, then never.”

Sanzo was so worried that he didn’t’ even feel like telling Gojyo to fuck off.

“I’ve never seen herbal- or chemistry-magic like this before,” he admitted in a quiet voice. And Gojyo, for once, didn’t fuck with him in return.

“You feelin’ it, too?”

Sanzo didn’t answer, just ground a spent cigarette under his bootheel and lit another one.

“Thought so.” Gojyo exhaled and sat next to Sanzo on the log. “Shit. And there’s nothin’ we can do. Is there.”

It wasn’t really a question. Sanzo didn’t tell Gojyo that, in that moment, he wished more than anything that he had the dharmic powers to undo this. To get back to normal. To continue on their journey as if this had never happened. One thing was for sure: it would teach Hakkai and Gojyo and Goku to beware crazy women bearing drinks.

_Then again, in Gojyo’s case, at least, it probably wouldn’t. _

Gojyo spoke again. “I still wish we could call Kougaiji’s crew. Maybe there’s a way.”

“If we could do that, we’d already be there,” Sanzo said. He couldn’t help adding, “Idiot.”

“Fuck you,” Gojyo said, voice growing louder in reply. “Hey. I’d do it, if it was me. ‘Cause I’m not a complete asshole. Why don’t you try something? Anything.”

“It’s out of the question,” Sanzo growled. This was the sort of matter he avoided most of all, was most unfamiliar with. Something else would present itself, he thought. Something, anything: Gojyo’s idea wasn’t a bad one, and if Sanzo could have figured out a way to accomplish it, he would have. Anything to avoid doing ... that. Hakkai moaned again and Sanzo’s belly tightened in sympathetic arousal, and Sanzo wondered yet again whether or not that was true.

“Uptight sonofabitch,” Gojyo growled in response. “I’d totally do it. To help my _friend_, Sanzo-sama.”

“Go ahead, shit-for-brains!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Gojyo said. “But I wish it did. ‘Cause I actually like Hakkai, and at least I know he likes me.”

“I don’t give a fuck who Hakkai likes,” Sanzo yelled, angry at Gojyo and the truth and the sudden jab of poisoned, spell-caused jealousy he’d felt at the thought of Gojyo doing what Hakkai needed.

“I wish that lady hadn’t killed herself,” Goku interjected. He sounded despondent.

“I like you just fine, Sanzo,” came Hakkai’s tired, amused voice. “And not just because of this mess. I’m so sorry.”

His voice had lowered at the end to a near-whisper. Sanzo sighed in defeat. Defeat by the situation, defeat by the truth, and his own weak body. He really had only one choice to make. They had to continue west. They could only do it with Hakkai, with him whole and well, and if the innkeeper’s son and Sanzo’s intuition were to be believed, there was a quick solution staring Sanzo in the eyes.

Hakkai. _Hakkai_. Sanzo had never looked at anyone that way, least of all his-- _companion. _

Sanzo supposed he’d done crazier shit in pursuit of their mission. And Hakkai? Well, Hakkai had fucked his sister. Sanzo thought he knew what choice Hakkai would make, whether he was in his right mind or not.

They could deal with the consequences later. Sanzo stood and tossed yet another cigarette onto the ground at his feet.

“Fine,” he said.

Gojyo looked gratifyingly stunned. “Really?” he said. He didn’t sound as happy about it as he might have, given the circumstances.

“What did I just say, moron?” Sanzo said in a clear voice. He’d decided upon a path and he was going to follow it. That didn’t mean he knew _exactly_ how it was to be accomplished. At least it was Hakkai, and not one of the idiots, or a stranger... “Keep Goku and Hakuryuu here. Don’t follow us.”

“Uh. Okay, man.” Gojyo now looked distinctly uncomfortable. Sanzo thought it worth the decision if only to have seen that on the self-righteous bastard’s face. “Just. Go somewhere far. Okay, Sanzo-chan?”

Sanzo didn’t deign to reply, just walked over to where Hakkai lay bound, hand-and-foot, on the ground, shivering and puffing harsh breaths into the grass. Sanzo bent down and untied Hakkai’s feet. He pulled out his gun.

“Help him stand,” he told Gojyo and Goku. To Hakkai he said, “If you try anything before I say, I’ll kill you.”

“I understand,” Hakkai said as he was hoisted to his feet. He sounded relieved, breathy but coherent. Sanzo left Hakkai’s hands tied behind his back and cocked the pistol so that Hakkai would know it was pointed at the back of his head.

“Walk until I say stop.”

“I understand, Sanzo,” Hakkai said. This time it was low, throaty, sensual.

_He couldn’t help it: it was_ extremely _strong herbal-chemical-magic_, Sanzo told himself when his heart thumped at the sound of it.

“Geez, Sanzo!” Whether it was Goku or Gojyo speaking, Sanzo didn’t care.

They started walking, Hakkai in front, Sanzo behind, slow, steady steps. They followed a little animal-trail into the woods and were soon enveloped by the dark. Moonlight shining through the branches spotlighted them every few steps; Sanzo could see it gleaming off the top of Hakkai’s sweat-slicked dark hair.

Hakkai halted once, too early. “Please stop, Sanzo,” he begged.

“Walk,” Sanzo said, and nudged him in the back with the gun. He wasn’t ready. “Just a little further.”

A few dozen more steps and they reached a little grassy clearing, only a couple meters in diameter. Sanzo knew it was probably perfect for... that. It seemed Hakkai thought so as well, because he stopped again, getting another nuzzle in the spine from the barrel of Sanzo’s gun.

“Please, Sanzo. I can’t go much further.” Hakkai hung his head and stood in place, a dejected statue. He twitched his fingers about his bound wrists. “Please.”

“Fine, then. Stop.” Sanzo thumbed the safety of his gun and tucked it away. When he glanced up again, Hakkai was close, too close, eyes dark in his pale face.

“Sanzo,” he whispered.

“Hey--”

Hakkai leaned-fell into Sanzo, his face in Sanzo’s shoulder, mouth open, sliding his tongue up and down Sanzo’s neck. “I have to, Sanzo,” he mumbled.

Sanzo knew that, but wasn’t ready for...whatever. He tried to back a step or two away and Hakkai followed like they were attached at the chest, his mouth locked to Sanzo’s throat, the wet swirling of his tongue and his moans powerful magic of their own in the moonlit forest. Sanzo hadn’t known his body could produce chills like this-- he _wasn’t ready--_

He was stopped from behind by something cool and hard-- _a tree?_\-- and Hakkai’s mouth was at his ear. Sanzo knew he could shove Hakkai away, _should_ shove Hakkai away, but he didn’t.

“Sanzo,” Hakkai whispered. “Please untie my hands. _Please._”

It was a plea that Sanzo could not ignore. He was too focused on the wet, hot sucking at his neck, could only fumble his hands around Hakkai’s waist to work at the knot. It was too difficult to concentrate, too new and surreal. Surely this sensual being couldn’t be Hakkai, his-- almost always-- rational friend.

That thought did it for a moment: Sanzo’s head cleared somewhat. They had to do this, it wasn’t just some sudden crazy fancy that had overtaken them. It was an imperative. That it felt much too good was irrelevant.

Then Hakkai’s hands were free and he captured Sanzo’s cheeks and was kissing Sanzo again, like before in the road but not, not quite as crazed but with more intent, slow, insistent.

Sanzo didn’t know what to do. Every new experience, one after another, was coming too quickly for him: Hakkai’s slender body pressed against him, the hard shove into his belly. He focused on the mouth. Now that the _thing_ was to be done he let himself taste it, tasted Hakkai’s moans and breath, hot and desperate and not at all Hakkai, but no less arousing. He wondered if that was what Hakkai was like when he was...

“Sanzo. Thank you. Thank you,” Hakkai whispered between kisses when he came up for air. At certain moments he almost sounded normal. “You feel so good. I dreamed about touching you. All night. Let me show you. ”

Hakkai pressed Sanzo into the tree for what seemed like hours while Sanzo learned to stop wondering, learned to kiss back. His tongue followed the lead of Hakkai’s in his mouth, slow, wet circles, jabs, and it did taste like what he needed; the plan, the _thing_ would work, they would be free whether they wanted it or not. Sanzo gave up trying to stifle his own moans.

“You need me to touch you, I know it, Sanzo...”

Yes, yes, he did. Hakkai’s hands were everywhere they could find skin. It wasn’t until Sanzo felt the fingers at his belly, sliding into his jeans, that he panicked once more.

“Wait-- Dammit, Hakkai!” His robe was open and hanging from his arms-- _how had that happened? _\-- and Sanzo didn’t know what was expected of him--

Hakkai pulled back a bit, seeming reasonable for a moment or two despite his glazed eyes and shiny face. He leaned his sweaty forehead against Sanzo’s. “I have to. I’m dying of it. I hurt so much, I swear,” he huffed. “God, Sanzo, I have to-- I’m sorry-- No, I’m glad--”

His hand squeezed Sanzo’s ass through his jeans. Hakkai wanted to do that--

“I can’t. I can’t-- Can’t you...” Sanzo could hardly breathe, himself. “Can’t you just jerk off or something?”

“Hah.” Hakkai’s laugh against Sanzo’s cheek sounded almost amused. “I suppose I can try. I haven’t-- hah-- had the chance. But you’re here now, Sanzo. As long as you stay here with me...”

Hakkai’s hand left Sanzo’s ass and slid up under his own loose shirt, then down into his pants, and he moaned into Sanzo’s mouth. When Hakkai’s fingers freed his own cock and grabbed it, his Ngh! of pleasure made Sanzo realize that he’d gotten what he wanted but he was hard, too; those fingers should be squeezing him, instead...

Sanzo dwelled in the haze of the _ngh_-taste in his mouth and the slap-sound of skin on skin as Hakkai worked himself. At some point Sanzo had slid his hands under Hakkai’s shirt, was clenching his waist, slippery with sweat, and could feel the measured undulations of Hakkai’s muscles through his skin.

Too soon the movements and the _nghs_ grew sharp and short, discordant. Hakkai came and Sanzo felt the wetness of it on his own abdomen, through the thin cloth of his shirt. Hakkai’s hand shoved under the shirt, spreading it about on Sanzo’s belly, his long fingers working it into Sanzo’s skin. It was too arousing for words.

“God, Sanzo,” Hakkai breathed.

“Did it work?” Sanzo managed to breathe back.

“No,” Hakkai said. “You need to help me...”

By then Sanzo’s body was in full rebellion against his rational mind, and winning. “Yes. Please,” he said, and he didn’t feel humiliated at all by the admission. Hakkai laughed against his lips again.

***

Hakkai had given up on his rational mind long since past, some time earlier that afternoon, perhaps. He was already hard again: the resurgence of ache and want was almost expected. Hakkai knew the signs, could feel the sensations returning that had wracked his body over and over for the past twenty-four hours.

It had been incredibly erotic to touch himself. As long as he was holding onto Sanzo, Hakkai could do anything. Ultimately, however, it had only prolonged the agony. It was a nasty sort of aphrodisiac that the dead Shaowei had offered him, indeed.

Being near the object of his lust was better than anything. It consumed him, in fact, until nothing else mattered. Hakkai had finally recognized the flaw in himself that the poison had found and exploited. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t allow it to do so, however, now that he had the chance to indulge it.

“You’ll help me, won’t you?” he whispered into Sanzo’s ear as the pulled off the white robe and then clenched Sanzo’s slender waist, his ribs, removing the tight silk shirt that was keeping Sanzo away from him.

“Yes...”

“Thank you,” Hakkai said. It was almost too easy. _Up_ went Sanzo’s arms as Hakkai yanked the black silk over Sanzo’s blond head. _The arm-covers would stay; they were too fiddly, but the jeans would have to go..._

Hakkai took a moment to admire the pale chest before him, the defined shape of the muscles shifting beneath the skin with every breath Sanzo fought to catch. Hakkai felt all the ridges and indents with his fingers, one by one, before thumbing open the button of Sanzo’s low-slung jeans. He very much enjoyed the sharp, half-bitten off cry that Sanzo uttered when Hakkai found Sanzo’s erection, jutting against his abdomen just below the zipper.

What did Hakkai care any more that the object of his lust was a man, or that it was Sanzo? It didn’t matter, only that Sanzo was there and panting into Hakkai’s fevered neck and that Hakkai was smelling the scent of his soft hair, clean like the outdoors, lovely in a different way from the smoke and Sanzo-taste of his mouth. All of it eased Hakkai’s suffering, and that was all he cared about.

His fingers stroked the skin of Sanzo’s cock, smooth and hot like his own.

“This won’t help, but I think you might enjoy it if I do it, anyway,” Hakkai told Sanzo’s ear.

“Bastard,” Sanzo mumbled. Hakkai felt the entire slim body tense until he clenched his fingers about the swollen skin of Sanzo’s erection: nearly all of Sanzo’s muscles slackened at once. “Yes,” Sanzo said then.

Rational Hakkai felt momentary guilt, then drowned it by kissing Sanzo again, feeling the sharp desperate breaths that poor Sanzo’s lungs produced. Surely they couldn’t be half as painful as those Hakkai had endured _all day._

“You’ll like this, too,” Hakkai promised, and kissed his way down Sanzo’s breastbone to his navel, yanking Sanzo’s jeans down his thighs as he went. He tasted his own come on Sanzo’s flat belly. It had been a very long time since he’d experienced that particular taste, but that was only half-remembered now, pale in comparison to the sharp of the moment.

His lips found Sanzo’s cock and tasted it, too, wondering if they all tasted like that. If his did. They must not, because this tasted like _Sanzo, Sanzo_. Hakkai’s own moan was the loudest in the quiet forest, the green. _God_, he hurt. _He was still Sanzo’s prisoner in this-- who was he to tease? _

He could feel the throbbing, the beat of Sanzo’s frantic heart when he wrapped his fingers around the base and gave an experimental pull. The smooth head was quite compact and, apparently, quite sensitive on Sanzo’s untutored body: Sanzo’s knees gave out and he slumped down the tree, huffing. Hakkai followed. He would experience it all, leave no stone unturned.

_Stone-- he was stone, haha--_

Hakkai’s fingers and mouth worked more quickly than he might have possibly imagined.

“_Please. Please_,” said Sanzo’s hoarse cries as he came against Hakkai’s cheek, and it was just like his poisoned fever-dream, and Sanzo was begging him for more. Hakkai’s body was begging, too, as he swiped at his cheek. The pale, viscous fluid joined the streaks on Sanzo’s belly.

“Yes,” Hakkai said. His quick fingers made short work of the buckles on Sanzo’s boots. These he yanked off and then the jeans by the hem. Sanzo helped by lifting his hips from the grass, and he was hard again already, too, because only one thing would be enough for either of them, and they could only get it from each other _nasty little poison_. But could Sanzo ever say again that he didn’t need Hakkai?

_That was a stupid thought_, Hakkai’s mind told him, but he ignored it in the requirements of the moment. His own loose clothing was shed even more easily than Sanzo’s had been. Soon he kneeled, naked, between Sanzo’s legs and looked at his partner in this mutual forced need-fest, touched his face, his hair, his hands with their silk covers.

Sanzo’s eyes were wide with lust and some little fear, Hakkai imagined. He felt a momentary tenderness and desire to kiss those swollen, slightly-parted lips more gently than he had ever imagined: but it didn’t last long, couldn’t when his every muscle screamed at him finish this, to end the ache and the want. In the end he simply swiped at Sanzo’s stomach, retrieving their intermingled semen, and swirled it about one finger.

A canny sort of expression entered Sanzo’s eyes. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. What you’ve been doing,” he said.

Hakkai’s quiet desperation was not in the mood for that sort of talk. He was too close...

“I know what I’m doing, Sanzo,” Hakkai said and kissed Sanzo again, more forcefully than he’d wanted to moments before, lips smashing down and tongue driving Sanzo’s protests back down beneath the lust, where they belonged. He pushed his finger between Sanzo’s buttocks, found the tight opening.

“You have to help me, Sanzo,” Hakkai whispered. He tried to slide his finger in further, let this thumb brush the incredibly soft underside of Sanzo’s testicles, _a little more, there--_

“It hurts,” they whispered at the same time, into each others’ mouths. Sanzo’s shock must have been greater, for his body jerked and Hakkai’s finger found its way.

“Ah-- That was--” Sanzo tried to say.

“Hush,” Hakkai whispered with infinite patience while his body raged on without his mind-- _tight, so tight--_

“Ah--”

“Sanzo... Sanzo,” Hakkai whispered into Sanzo’s mouth. _That basic anatomy class at University had certainly come in handy on this trip, hadn’t it?_ Hakkai’s disconnected mind whispered to his body. Hakkai’s finger pushed, and Sanzo _sobbed_ and shuddered and his body arched up into Hakkai’s and Hakkai’s body reached the limit of its tolerance.

He replaced his finger inside Sanzo with his own throbbing, hurting, _dying, I’m dying, surely_ cock, and it was exactly like loving his fever-dream Sanzo, his hair soft against Hakkai’s fingers and his thighs and hands gripping Hakkai’s body, pushing as Hakkai rocked inside him, over and over.

Whatever Sanzo’s mind was doing his body was synced to Hakkai’s: they were in the temple with the incense; they were back on the floor of the forest, locked so close in this back-and-forth that they were eternal, _dark and light, and Sanzo was the light, he was what would save Hakkai’s life and how many times had he done that, and would do so again? _

Would it ever feel the same, though? No, Hakkai’s mind and body told him, _nothing would ever feel like this._ Sanzo’s neck tasted like sweat and dirt and leaves, and his low moans of _please, please, please_ were the questions and Hakkai’s louder breaths of _yes, yes yes_ were the answers.

Hakkai had lost track of time, too focused elsewhere: the tight in his body was only growing and it had been impossibly tense for too long, already, surely it couldn’t go on like this forever, because he was still dying. After forever or a few minutes, or both, Sanzo’s body shuddered and his muscles clenched about Hakkai’s cock, buried inside. The _tight_ pushed Hakkai over the edge, and with a final _Sanzo!_he climaxed also, body losing momentum but forcing itself inside just a few more times, to force every last ounce of _Oh, thank you, thank you_ into Sanzo.

Neither of them could breathe correctly when Hakkai collapsed onto Sanzo’s chest. And no longer were their bodies in sync: for several minutes their harsh inhalations and exhalations were ragged, off-tempo from each other.

But the ache, the dying sick was gone. And in Hakkai’s breathless, worn-out relief there was... nothing.

After a few more minutes a warmth began to grow in Hakkai’s limbs. It was familiar and welcome: the return of his qi. _Should I use it on Sanzo?_ Hakkai wondered. With the return of his mind to his body, another familiar sensation was growing: guilt.

Hakkai raised his head to risk a glance at Sanzo’s face. Sanzo’s eyes were focused somewhere above Hakkai, on the forest canopy, perhaps. Or the moon, more likely.

“Sanzo,” Hakkai said, quietly, beginning the process of peeling their sticky bodies apart. Surreal didn’t even begin to describe their current situation. And it had felt so right, only minutes ago. “I’m--”

“Can it,” Sanzo huffed. One of his hands was slapping about the forest floor.

_Cigarettes. He wants his cigarettes_, Hakkai realized. _How normal._ He was already sitting up; he found them for Sanzo and handed them over. Without a word Sanzo leaned against the tree. He tapped out the lighter and a cigarette, lit it, and took a few puffs.

Hakkai looked at Sanzo. Whether or not they were supposed to be embarrassed, whether or not Sanzo wanted to hear his apologies, Hakkai was still responsible--

“Are you _you_? That’s all I want to know,” Sanzo said, interrupting Hakkai’s train of thought.

“Yes,” Hakkai said, and realized that embarrassment was not to be an issue. He was probably meant to forget the whole thing. After a bit, however, he felt that in all honesty he should qualify his previous answer. “I think.”

“Good,” Sanzo said. “I think.” He stood. His body seemed stiff. He seemed to be searching for his clothing.

Trying to be polite, Hakkai turned his head and began searching out his own clothing. He wondered how he’d managed to toss his shirt so far into the trees.

After a few moments they were both dressed. Sticky, dirty, and rumpled, but dressed. They were ready to face the consequences. There would always be consequences, just as there would always be new, and difficult, and unlooked-for, challenges to face. Hakkai’s forbidden embarrassment and guilt were slowly replaced by the dark humor that gotten him through so many days.

“I think I understand, now, why Miss Shaowei was willing to do what she did,” he remarked.

Sanzo _hmphed_ and took another drag off his cigarette. “No wonder those idiot boys didn’t tell their parents,” was Sanzo’s reply.

Hakkai’s stomach hurt with his laugh. It was a good hurt.

***

**END.**

Thank you for reading! It wasn’t what I expected, but then no story I write ever is. Comments are wonderful, constructive criticism is encouraged (please, if you see any OOC or POV or tense issues, especially); even flames are loved.


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